[the bear]

We walk together along the seashore
The wind winding gulls and gannets
Sunlight coruscating on smooth glass
The tide is ebbing coyly revealing kelp
Whelks smelts drowned whelps
We follow the longshore drift
Tracing cusps of schoonered dunes
In no hurry to return home to face
The sympathetic sofa folk who poke
Well meaning noses into our grief
"we really admire how you cope"
On the beach we connect nothing
With cnut- thing
Our sorrow ebbs and flows
We calibrate our pain with
The metronomic tidebeat
She would have been ten today
Too old for sandcastles
Too young to walk alone
We could not see that
She was ebbing away
Until it was too late
And so we walk on

[hakking]

I enjoyed this poem and each time I read it, it got better. I wish I could write poetry like this.
However I think the combination of time and the sense of movement at the end 3 lines jars the flow at the end which conflicted a little with the meaning e.g ebbing away. In practical terms, it was a slight jarring of the cognitive flow during reading it.
I know it's very minor, in fact it's possibly intentional - but the rest of the poem was so smooth it didn't fit.

My 2p.

[the bear]

(Original post by hakking)
I enjoyed this poem and each time I read it, it got better. I wish I could write poetry like this.
However I think the combination of time and the sense of movement at the end 3 lines jars the flow at the end which conflicted a little with the meaning e.g ebbing away. In practical terms, it was a slight jarring of the cognitive flow during reading it.
I know it's very minor, in fact it's possibly intentional - but the rest of the poem was so smooth it didn't fit.

My 2p.

Thanks for your thoughtful comments Hakking. The end is a bit rough as you say;
fortunately i have never lost a child... i tried to imagine how bereaved parents might find not consolation but emotional scenery on the beach.

[Roshniroxy]

(Original post by hakking)
I enjoyed this poem and each time I read it, it got better. I wish I could write poetry like this.
However I think the combination of time and the sense of movement at the end 3 lines jars the flow at the end which conflicted a little with the meaning e.g ebbing away. In practical terms, it was a slight jarring of the cognitive flow during reading it.
I know it's very minor, in fact it's possibly intentional - but the rest of the poem was so smooth it didn't fit.

My 2p.

Your analysis seems very good, I'm trying to find a a fresh interpretation of a certain words purpose in this poem:

Dear Norman

I have turned the newspaper boy into a diver
for pearls. I can do this. In my night
there is no moon, and if it happens that I speak
of stars it’s by mistake. Or if it happens
that I mention these things it is by design.


His body is brown, breaking through waves. Such white teeth.
Beneath the water he searches for the perfect shell.
He does not know that, as he posts the Mirror
through the door, he is equal with dolphins.
I shall name him Pablo, because I can.

The poem continues.....


The particular word i'm interested in is 'Mirror', I'd like to think of it as the posting of the newspaper of The Mirror but i'm contemplating whether I can make a tenuous link between the fact that The Mirror as I googled was originally a newspaper for a female audience so maybe that links in some how to something ?

[hakking]

(Original post by Roshniroxy)
Your analysis seems very good, I'm trying to find a a fresh interpretation of a certain words purpose in this poem:

Dear Norman

I have turned the newspaper boy into a diver
for pearls. I can do this. In my night
there is no moon, and if it happens that I speak
of stars it’s by mistake. Or if it happens
that I mention these things it is by design.


His body is brown, breaking through waves. Such white teeth.
Beneath the water he searches for the perfect shell.
He does not know that, as he posts the Mirror
through the door, he is equal with dolphins.
I shall name him Pablo, because I can.

The poem continues.....


The particular word i'm interested in is 'Mirror', I'd like to think of it as the posting of the newspaper of The Mirror but i'm contemplating whether I can make a tenuous link between the fact that The Mirror as I googled was originally a newspaper for a female audience so maybe that links in some how to something ?

I'll be honest I don't really like Carol Ann Duffy's stuff. Your interpretation is as good as mine.

This article is written well after when this poem was published but might help you inform your opinion. Dolphins are one of very few creatures that are able to recognize themselves in mirrors (I don't know when that was discovered either!).

I hope this leads you onto a another train of thought without giving you any answers as such!

[sammy-lou]

(Original post by the bear)
We walk together along the seashore
The wind winding gulls and gannets
Sunlight coruscating on smooth glass
The tide is ebbing coyly revealing kelp
Whelks smelts drowned whelps
We follow the longshore drift
Tracing cusps of schoonered dunes
In no hurry to return home to face
The sympathetic sofa folk who poke
Well meaning noses into our grief
"we really admire how you cope"
On the beach we connect nothing
With cnut- thing
Our sorrow ebbs and flows
We calibrate our pain with
The metronomic tidebeat
She would have been ten today
Too old for sandcastles
Too young to walk alone
We could not see that
She was ebbing away
Until it was too late
And so we walk on

This was really lovely, it's not often that I feel truly moved by a poem but this was one of those times. What really stood out to me about this was your ability to move between very different complexities and fields of language in one text without making it sound jolty or broken in any way. There's probably a term for that; I hope you know what I mean!

Well done, I'll keep an eye out for your future work.

[the bear]

(Original post by sammy-lou)
This was really lovely, it's not often that I feel truly moved by a poem but this was one of those times. What really stood out to me about this was your ability to move between very different complexities and fields of language in one text without making it sound jolty or broken in any way. There's probably a term for that; I hope you know what I mean!

Well done, I'll keep an eye out for your future work.

Thanks Sammy-Lou.
I am glad that my poem worked for you.
The seashore is very inspirational for me.
This liminal region on the fringes of our world is a place of dreams recollection and forgetting

[Roshniroxy]

(Original post by hakking)
I'll be honest I don't really like Carol Ann Duffy's stuff. Your interpretation is as good as mine.

This article is written well after when this poem was published but might help you inform your opinion. Dolphins are one of very few creatures that are able to recognize themselves in mirrors (I don't know when that was discovered either!).

I hope this leads you onto a another train of thought without giving you any answers as such!

I was thinking more along the lines of this woman is at home, and for some reason I felt she is trapped-isolated in like a 20th century- women stay at home way. The mirror being the first newspaper in Britain to target females provides her with entertainment and a way to access the world... taking her on a imaginative journey...

That's so bloody wrong and tenuous but I really want to think of something very clever about this poem. I refuse to believe that Duffy just created this very strong voice to tell us that our imagination is boundless